Double Digit Inflation With No Growth
They pretend that inflation is low but I don’t think inflation is low. As you would have seen in my presentation, there’s an index called the Chapwood Index that measures 500 different items in 20 different cities in the US. The index, every year from ‘11 to today, has been in the double-digits.
So imagine double-digit inflation with 2% GDP growth. You would be really shrinking at 8%. Today we saw that wage gains in the second quarter were 0.2%. Well, 0.2% in the quarter is like 0.8% for a year. I can assure you that everyone’s increases in healthcare costs this year will suck up more than that wage gain. Somehow these costs don’t go into the CPI thing. I don’t know how they don’t, but they’re just not going to tell us what inflation really is. It’s much higher than is being reported, I think.
It tends to distort all the numbers. It makes GDP way higher than it would otherwise be and tries to keep a certain calmness in a very, very difficult economic environment.